Anonymous Parisian illuminator - photo 1
Anonymous Parisian illuminator - photo 2
Anonymous Parisian illuminator - photo 3
Anonymous Parisian illuminator - photo 4

Anonymous Parisian illuminator

Lot 9
13.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 5 670
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1105637
Lot 9 | Anonymous Parisian illuminator
Estimate value
£ 4 000 – 6 000
Anonymous Parisian illuminator

David striking his bells, historiated initial on a leaf from the Bible of Mirmellus Arnandi, with a text leaf, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Paris, c.1300]

An engaging miniature from a deluxe Parisian Bible perhaps made for the Chartreuse de Vauvert, later owned by the judge and lawyer Mirmellus Arnandi.



Each leaf c.407 x 272mm. The historiated initial 'E' opening Psalm 81 ('Exultate Deo [...]); the text leaf from Genesis 37:13-40:8, 50 lines of text in two columns, headings and chapter numbers in red and blue, rubrics in red, nine illuminated initials with page-height borders, contemporary and later annotations in the margins (a little marginal thumbing and dampstaining, remnants of adhesive).



Provenance:

(1) The parent manuscript was likely written for a Carthusian house, with the puntus flexus punctuation typical of Cistercian and Carthusian books, and later added Carthusian markings in the margins, but copied from a non-Carthusian exemplar: a marginal contemporary note alongside the prologue for II Chronicles reads ‘Iste prologus non legitur in carthusia et ideo non correctus’. Peter Kidd suggests it may have been produced for the Chartreuse de Vauvert, on the site of what is now the Jardin de Luxembourg (see P. Kidd, The McCarthy Collection, II, 2019, no 60, pp.199-202).



(2) Mirmellus Arnandi, lawyer and judge, bequeathed in 1450 to:



(3) a Dominican convent (on the basis of partially erased inscriptions on several of the leaves).



(4) ‘The Property of a Gentleman Resident on the Continent’, Sotheby’s, 7 July 1931, lot 389.



(5) The property of an ‘Italian Private Collector’, Parke-Bernet, New York, 30 November 1948, lot 326, where it was still substantially complete and described as having 503 leaves and 86 historiated initials. Bought by Philip C. Duschnes and/or:



(6) Otto F. Ege (1888-1951), of Cleveland, broken up by him. 210 disbound leaves and 8 historiated initials were sold at Sotheby’s, 11 December 1984, lot 39, bought by Maggs, of which 102 leaves were acquired by the Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, MS 223, other leaves are widely scattered, including a number at the Beinecke Library and the Metropolitan Museum.



Illumination:

The illumination has variously been attributed to northern France or French Flanders, with the style compared to the illumination in a Lancelot manuscript of the first third of the 14th century at the Bodleian (MS. Rawl. Q.b.6), and to that of the de Bar manuscripts made in the region of Metz. The style of illumination of the historiated initials should be attributed to Paris, c.1300.

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